Memories of jury duty

There is a quote, attributed in many forms and to many people but scholarly research credits to the American poet, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887), that says

“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”

Something else that might be included on that esteemed list is jury duty.

I have not had that much contact with courts over the years. The first time I recall being in a court room was to see the initial jury selection phase of the San Quentin Six trial in the mid 1970's. I remembering going through security for the courtroom just behind Angela Davis, famous 1970's radical.

Angela Davis (Photo: Smithsonian Magazine)

 

Everyone knew it was going to be a long trial. Everyone knew is was going to be a controversial trial. Everyone was using whatever excuse they could to get out of the jury. Everyone was failing.

The same thoughts must have gone through the minds of the jurors in the recent Rittenhouse and Smollett trials although neither of those trial lasted anywhere as long as the San Quentin Six trial.

I only sat on a jury one time. What was most surprising was that the prosecution looked like it was conducted by Hamilton Burger and the that defense attorney emulated Perry Mason.

It was an interesting and sad case. The groundwork was laid in the early 20th Century. A Norwegian couple purchased a large parcel of land in Snohomish County, Washington, north of Seattle. In their wills, the couple divided the land up between several heirs. Years later, those heirs further divided the land up between their heirs. In the late 1980's or early 1990's, one of the current generation of land owners, whom I will call John, got into a spat with one of the other land owners. The way the property was laid out, the other land owner could not get to his property without going across John's land. John blocked the access to the other property and the other owner sued John. The other owner won a judgment of $20,000 against John.

John was not a rich man. He lived with his common-law wife and her son who was in his early 20's. The son was known to be involved in drug dealing.

John's nephew, who I will call Sleazebag, needed some money. He came up with the idea of contacting the Drug Enforcement Agency offering to get John's son into a situation that would lead to his arrest -- and Sleazebag would get paid for his efforts.

Sleazebag went to John's house looking for the son, but the son was not at home. Rather than go home empty handed, he decided to get John -- who was in his 50's -- involved into a drug deal. Sleazebag would have made Joe Izuzu proud.  

One of Sleazebag's lines, that I remember to this day was

You don't have $20,000. If you don't come up with it, you will lose everything.

John was hooked. Sleazebag continued to collect money from the DEA for being an informer, although he went months without reporting anything. The all of a sudden he comes out of the woodwork and reports that he has his uncle ready to engage in a drug deal. The DEA is again interested. They wire-up Sleazebag with a hidden microphone and he goes to John's house.

That resulted in something no one on the jury had ever dreamed of. Sure, everyone urinates. But there is something I have never seen or heard on TV or in a movie: Sleazebag gets to John's house and says "I have to take a leak." While he empties his bladder, the sound of which almost drown out everything else, the two discuss their impending drug deal.

Finally, Sleazebag gets a a quantity of cocaine -- from the DEA. He and John go to the parking lot of a local mall where John is arrested. When all is said and done, John was a desperate man who for the most part was just going along for the ride while Sleazebag did all the work.

I was called into Federal  Court in Seattle for John's trial. Most of the people on the jury were nondescript Americans. I vaguely remember then man who we chose as the foreman. The only person I really remember was a young woman with long blond hair in her early 20's -- Hippy Chick. I just knew Hippy Chick was going to vote for acquittal.

We were going to spend a lot of time in the jury room. The Court thought of that, so they gave us a large tin of Danish Butter Cookies to munch on. I figured I was going to hate those cookies by the time the trial was over. 

I was right.

One day as we came back from our lunch break, I stepped onto the elevator to go to the second floor. I looked up and saw the defence attorney in the back. I graciously stepped back out and waited for the next elevator. I don't know if that was required of me, but I thought that discretion was the better part of valor.

During the trial, besides Sleazebag we also heard testimony from several law enforcement officers. There was a layout of John's house on an easel in the courtroom. We heard two or three officers describe how John's room was in the front of the house and the son's room was in the back and how some marijuana was found in the son's room. Then we heard an officer from the Washington State Patrol testify that the son's room was at the front of the house and John's room, where the marijuana was found, was in the back. Were they even working on the same case?

On the morning of the third day we received our instructions and retired to the jury room. The charges against John were Conspiracy to distribute, and Possession to distribute.

The views in the jury room were a little surpising. While I, a fairly conservative guy in my mid-to-late 30's, was ready to acquit on both counts, Hippy Chick was looking in her purse to see if she had a hammer to help build the gallows. Goes to show you never can tell. 

One of the odd things about those charges was that in order to be guilty of possession for sale, you had to be involved in a conspiracy. We found John not guilty of conspiracy, but guilty of possession. The lawyers may have wondered about that. Our reasoning was that we found John not guilty of conspiracy because we felt he had been entrapped, not because he was not involved. I was ready to find him not guilty on possession because we voted to find him not guilty of conspiracy, but they convinced me that by the time he was in possession, he should have known better. Sad thing is, I doubt he ever even touched the stuff. He was really just along for the ride. Maybe that apparent discrepancy provided for a successful appeal. If not, he should have known better to be in the car that night.

To a person, all of us on the jury wanted to tell the defence attorney "The bad news is your client was convicted. The good news is can we have your card so we can all you if we ever need a lawyer"

On second thought, it might be less disheartening to watch sausage being made than to be on a jury.